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Sunday, July 31, 2005

the conspiracy of inanimate things continues

I just want to go on record as saying the following: I strongly suspect that our family's barbecue grill is a sentient being, and that it hates me with a flaming orange passion and wishes me ill with every particle of its essence. The chicken never catches on fire when anyone else is cooking it.

Books for July

(bold indicates a first-time read; ratings are out of a possible five)

1. Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane) -- Gavin de Becker -- 4.5 (nonfiction)
   • This is a book which I am not only going to buy for myself, I'm going to buy copies to give away to my friends who are parents. It's an excellent, necessary book about using our instincts (and teaching our children to use theirs) to keep our children safe, with a lot of very useful information about what tactics to watch out for in people who would abuse our children, or ourselves. It was written by an expert on violent behavior, who advises the Supreme Court and the White House about security issues. Read it with discernment, as the guy draws some evolutionary parallels which I don't agree with, but I can't argue with his main points, and I have already begun applying his advice to my life and my parenting.
2. The Living -- Annie Dillard -- 4.5
   • This is not a book through which you race along. It took me a full month to read it, I think. It's very dense, very solid, full of similes that make you think, and situations that make you cringe or cry or laugh or shudder. There's not much of a plot, which in this instance is OK, because the focus of the story is on the people and on the place in which they live and on the nature of life there. You get a definite sense in the first half of the book of the apparent randomness of death on the 19th-century Northwestern U.S. frontier, and the second half goes more into life in a boom town and the way the ups and downs of that kind of existence affect the characters. I'm making it sound very dull, but it's not; the writing is lyrical and thoughtful and very, very good.
3. Into the Wilderness -- Sara Donati -- 4.5
   • This is a romantic historical fiction series I've read a few times before. This first book in it is my favorite of the four available so far, I think. I needed something whose plot would keep me turning pages, after all the heavy reading in The Living, and this was exactly what I needed: quick reading without being light, romance without ripping bodices, and a likable cast of characters (when you have two people who are loosely based upon Elizabeth Bennet (and other Austen heroines) and Daniel Day-Lewis* in "The Last of the Mohicans" marrying and living in the wilderness of upstate New York in 1792 -- how can it go wrong?). The research is impeccable, but the author doesn't bog you down with a lot of stuff she thought was too interesting to leave out of the book -- which sometimes happens in historical fiction.
     
     *the author actually based him on the son of Daniel Day-Lewis' character, as he was portrayed in Cooper's The Pioneers -- but she also acknowledges that she pictures DD-L when she writes about him, and let's just say the guy takes after his father in a big way.
     
     
4. Dawn on a Distant Shore -- Sara Donati -- 3.5
   • In this second novel in the Into the Wilderness series, Elizabeth and Nathaniel go to Scotland. Still very well-written, but a little more "intrigue" than I like. Warning: if you have children you will really want to give them lots of hugs about a third of the way into this book. Make sure they're available.
5. Lake in the Clouds -- Sara Donati -- 4
   • The third novel in the Wilderness series. There are some very disturbing mental images here, but some very good storytelling too, with three-dimensional characters (especially the new ones -- with the exception of Hannah and Curiosity, I find the characters we already knew from the previous two books to be perhaps a little flat in this one).
6. Fire Along the Sky -- Sara Donati -- 4
   • The fourth novel in the Wilderness series, and I think my second-favorite, after Into the Wilderness. Often when an author adds in new characters as a series moves along, they fail to excite as much interest as the originals who started the whole story moving, but this series is definitely an exception to that. In this fourth volume, several previously minor characters become major ones, and it is a delight to get to know them better; they flesh out as very real-seeming individuals -- without taking away from the story surrounding the other principals whom we've known longer.
     
     One caveat about this whole series: the author has a bit of a bias against Christianity, and it shows. My skin's thick enough to handle this, and I can still enjoy the series a great deal in spite of it.

Friday, July 29, 2005

blecch

I have been getting comments-spam. (also trackback spam, which is why I turned trackbacks off a while ago, not that anyone likely noticed). No thank you I am NOT interested in... any of that stuff. How. Annoying. But hey, at least somebody's writing something in here.

Also, it is way hot, still. I can now say officially that I hate July. And it's not looking good for August either.

We had a swimming party today (one of LT's friends had a birthday) at our public pool, and ten minutes after we all got in, they had to clear the pool for 36 hours because of a Bodily Emission in the Pool. Yeah, no problem, I will LEAP out of the water; you don't have to ask me twice.

And also, why did Wal-Mart have to add glittery little things to the neckline of their tank tops? I was enjoying being able to buy myself a really useful piece of clothing for $4.50 every time I went shopping, but the jewels-on-the-neck thing takes a tank top from "yeah, I'm casual, that's the point, duh" to "see how fancy I can be for only $4.50? What do you mean, tacky, these are jewels!" So I had to stop at only four different colors, instead of having one in every color except lime green by the end of the summer. Life is full of little disappointments like that, isn't it.

Otherwise, everything's great. Kids are healthy, I'm healthy, T is healthy, everyone's getting along, except for the tendency the kids have nowadays to try to boss each other around all day long, just to see if they can in fact make me certifiably crazy before my thirty-first birthday. Really I am quite cheerful and happy. A little insane, but happy.

P.S. I just finished reading one of my favorite book series -- the Into the Wilderness series by Sara Donati, which in my opinion puts the Outlander series (which I also like) to shame, although a lot of people compare the two. This means that in about a week and a half I read approximately 2500 pages of epic historical family-drama romantic fiction with complicated plots and excellent characterization and wow. Anyway. Now I need something kind of light and maybe quirky before I dive into Middlemarch, and I was thinking I'd read The Blue Castle, but I realized I'm wanting something I've never read before. I tried The Eyre Affair, but five pages into it I decided that it was going in the yard sale pile, just not my type. Any recommendations? Please?

Monday, July 25, 2005

is your quiver full?

One issue that confronts any Christian family sooner or later is that of the "quiver full" mentality (the name is taken from Psalm 127). This philosophy (to some, it's actually more of a theology), boiled down, means that any use of birth control, including natural family planning through periodic abstinence, is a sin. You can find good discussions on this topic in a lot of places, Marla Swoffer's blog and MzEllen & Co being two of them that I've found so far. My own personal position on QF has changed over the years. I went from an unthinking position of "of course people plan their family size", through something akin to QF wherein I didn't necessarily think it was a sin to use birth control, but thought it was not very nice to God, to where I am now, which is that I have no problem with people choosing not to limit their family size, but I have no problem with people choosing to limit it either. (And, hello, my husband had a vasectomy after C was born, and I had a hysterectomy four months ago, so that probably says a lot right there.)

To follow my path from there to here, let's look at that verse first.

Ps 127:3-5 3 Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; the fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. 5 How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they shall not be ashamed, when they speak with their enemies in the gate. (NAS)

Does the verse say "Thou shalt have many children?" No. There's no command. It says that children are a blessing, and indeed they are, and that a man who has a lot of them is a happy guy. It DOES NOT SAY that to not have a quiver full of arrows from the Lord means that you're in rebellion (and God does not mince words when it comes to rebellion). There are a lot of things described in Scripture as blessings, with or without that exact wording, that aren't for everybody. Singleness is a blessing (1 Cor 7:8). Marriage is a blessing (Genesis 2:24). Divine revelation (Matthew 16:17), mourning (Matthew 5:4), poor spirits (Matthew 5:4)... all of these are blessings or characteristics worthy of blessing, but those verses do not mean that those who do not have divine revelations or mourn or feel depressed are in sin.

Another verse that sees heavy use in QF circles is Genesis 1:28:

Gen 1:28 28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it... (NAS)

Um, the earth has BEEN filled and subdued. That command has been fulfilled. I honestly think that those words were specifically for Adam and Eve, and later for Noah's sons, and for the generations after them. Thousands of years later, here we are with six billion people living in pretty much every corner of the globe. Job's done.

Now let's move on to the philosophical arguments put up for the quiver-full mindset.

Are people who practice birth control displaying a lack of trust in God?

Well, maybe. But then, so would anyone be who purposefully tried to conceive, or anyone who paid for homeowner's insurance, or anyone went to the doctor for a health problem, or anyone who did anything that God can do for us... which is, if you carry this to the extreme, well, anything. I mean, if we were going to put the ultimate trust in God we would never work a day in our lives, trusting that He would provide for us. Obviously I'm not advocating that or saying that QF folks advocate it; I'm just pointing out that the line has to be drawn somewhere between trusting in the Lord and using the brains he gave us.

Do people who plan their family size place money and ease on too high a pedestal?

Sometimes. But to paint all non-QF types as money-hungry people who can't be bothered with the hassle and expense of a large family is doing a disservice. I was raised in a household without much money. Until my mom got a good job when I was ten, and my parents got out of debt not long after, we ate a lot of beans and wore a lot of hand-me-downs and lived in some very minimalist (and not in a stylish way) houses in rather undesirable locations (undesirable to the world at large. I LOVED where we lived.) Even after that we were never wealthy, or even close. And yes, I had a very happy childhood, and I am actually a little glad that some aspects of that are similar to what my children experience, because I think it's good for kids to hear "we can't afford that", and so learn that money means work, and that its availability is limited. However. Do I think it would have been wise for my parents to bring three, or five, or ten more children into that environment? No, I don't. The most important aspect of childrearing is love, that's completely true. But kids need to wear shoes, too, and have a place to live and food to eat, and I think it's irresponsible have a family larger than its breadwinner(s) can reasonably afford to take decent care of. I'm really happy for QF people who can afford to feed, clothe, and house ten or fifteen children. I think that's fantastic, I really do. I also know that if we were to do that we would be relying on the kindness of friends or the generosity of a bloated government -- or counting on God to supernaturally provide. Which, no question, God can if He wants to. But I think in addition to His supernatural provision, God has given us intelligence and reason and the ability to take daily care of ourselves, and he expects us to use that.

What about that guy in the Bible who was chastised for using birth control?

When you hear this, people are generally talking about Onan:

Gen 38:8-10 8 Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife, and perform your duty as a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother." 9 And Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so it came about that when he went in to his brother's wife, he wasted his seed on the ground, in order not to give offspring to his brother. 10 But what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD; so He took his life also. (NAS)

Onan didn't get in trouble because he spilled his seed on the ground. He got in trouble because he disobeyed an order to go get his dead brother's wife pregnant as a means of continuing the family line.

Is using birth control the same as infanticide or abortion?

Well, that depends. There are forms of birth control which are actually abortefacients (the "morning after pill", the minipill, the IUD, even to a degree the ordinary birth control pill and Depo-Provera) and those, in my opinion, are the equivalent of abortion, because rather than causing conception to fail to happen, they cause a fertilized egg (which has the complete genetic structure of the adult it will become) to fail to implant and hence to die. (the Pill and DP do this as a secondary "backup" function; their primary function is to prevent conception). But to cause the sperm to fail to meet the egg -- no. Any time a woman has a period, one of her eggs has just died. Billions and billions of a man's sperm will die or simply be re-absorbed by his body over the course of his life. That's the way God made us and there's no sin in that, because the sperm and the egg are still just cells belonging to the man's or woman's body, like skin cells or bone cells. Once they join, a new entity has been created, and that's a person with his/her own DNA and destiny, who just happens to have to live inside his/her mother for the first nine months of his/her existence.

***********************

This has come out rather anti-QF, and I didn't mean for it to be that way. I have the heartiest respect for people who practice that mindset, as long as they aren't being irresponsible with the public's money or the generosity of charitable people, and as long as -- here's a key thing -- they don't set it up as A Command From God. Because I frankly do not see that it is, and their black and white interpretation tends to make them really vehemently opposed to people who, for whatever reason, don't agree with them. Our childbearing history (daughter who died at nine weeks of age due to a congenital heart defect, for those of you who may be new) was an indicator to us that perhaps we shouldn't just keep on having more and more children. The slow, agonizing death of a child tears up a person and a family in many, many ways, and while that time was one in which we drew closer to the Lord than we'd been before or since, out of simple necessity really, I don't think God would advocate putting oneself and one's family through that kind of pain over and over. When Natalie died I was in my near-QF stage, and that didn't change with her death. I clung to my position and told my husband that the fact that he wanted to stop having children because of Natalie's death and because of the very real possibility that our future children would live similarly brief, painful lives (we did have one more afterward, C, who is completely healthy) meant that he would rather Natalie had never been born, that he was negating our love for her in a way. And I can see, looking back, how I could have felt that way then, but I don't, now. It's not so black and white as that. Which is hard for me to say, as a person who sees a lot more black and white in the world than most people do, but it's true.

Maybe, as T said when I would argue this point with him, maybe some couples just have smaller quivers than others.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

um...

...I got nothing.

Well, almost nothing. And it's BEEN nothing for a long time, which is why the calendar up there on the right has so few days in bold this month. Except now that I have the domain and all that (stupid stupid), this "got nothing" is costing me money. Dang. No way am I going back to blogger, though, just no way.

Today we again flea-fogged or bombed or whatever you want to call it our house. I am hoping that the reasons we failed to get the results we wanted (i.e. being able to sit still in our house without having leaping, biting insects take up residence on our shins) were that a) we failed to use enough fog for the space we have and b) we used a cheap brand and c) we let the cats back in afterward with no flea protection except flea collars. Oh please please let those be the reasons because dangit it's such a huge pain to try to get rid of these awful freakish little beasties. I saw one (1) flea on myself this afternoon, post-fogging, and I am going to assume (tra la la) that that was a flea that was on me before which means that it did not survive the Raid onslaught and that we will not be dealing with the same stupid frustrating problem in three days (tra la la).

Also, our car has no air conditioning, thanks to a really well-timed refrigerant leak. This is manifestly unfair and unkind and just mean of God, I think, since it is the hottest July I ever remember living through, and I have now lived through 31 California Julys. Or I will have lived through 31 of them, assuming I don't die of the heat in the next seven days, that is.

Also, swimming lessons are going (oh, you knew I was going to do it, didn't you) swimmingly. Both kids are enjoying them and learning lots and I'm actually taking pictures while I wait for their lessons to finish each day, which are pretty much the only pictures I've been taking at all lately, not sure why.

And I have a really awesome film camera (people moving up to digital are remarkably willing to part with nice photographic equipment), an N50 which is an SLR which means you can use all these schmancy lenses that you can change out, and all that, and I have this really awesome 70-300mm lens with a macro setting and I've been having so much fun with it, but it's a FILM CAMERA. Which means I have to, you know, get PRINTS of everything before I can even see how any of the pictures came out. How totally backward. What's really awesome, though, is that in a few years when we get me a D70 (digital SLR), the auxiliary lenses and things will work with it.

And thatisall. I told you. Almost nothing.

ETA:
P.S. I typed the above entry, posted it, shut down the computer, and went to get a drink of water before heading to bed and found that someone had put away the milk in the cupboard where the glasses go. I know that sounds like a Rachel-ish thing to do, but I swear it wasn't me. Fortunately, it was still cold.

P.P.S. Speaking of Rachel-ish things to do, I've been mulling about how many little intricacies are contained in our DNA. C not only looks a great deal like I did as a child (less now than she did, say, two years ago, though), she also has the following identical idiosyncrasies/character traits:

• She riffles the pages of the book while she reads it. (sub-item: she always, always wants to be reading. Reading is the default activity).
  
• She narrates her life, what her dolls are doing, what she's thinking -- aloud, as if she were reading a book, complete with fake British accent.
  
• She stubs her toes and smacks her head on things and falls down multiple times a day.
  
• She looks like she's drowning when she swims.
  
• She always wants to be kissing and hugging and "I love you"ing. Over and over and over and over and over.
  
• She has elaborate methods for randomly picking a book to read.
  
• She gets dirty as soon as she steps outside.
  
• She cries if you look at her sternly.
  

See what I mean? Nobody had to teach her to do these things. She isn't copying me -- especially since some of this is stuff I haven't done since well before she was born. It's fascinating, really.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

this is the same child...

...as is pictured in this entry. Really it is.

*Edited: Forgot to mention, she's not grimacing in pain, she's laughing maniacally. She and her brother had been having a waterfight (hence the shield and the water pistol) and she'd started playing in the mud. She swears she wasn't eating it, and I WANT to believe her...)

Sunday, July 17, 2005

I have a... what? oh yeah. A blog.

Really, I haven't forgotten this is here. I just haven't felt like writing. Even though I had a definitely blog-able (I refuse to coin the ugliest word in the world by leaving out the hyphen) day on Friday when I went to the San Joaquin Valley, a veritable comedy of errors involving, for example, an incident wherein about two dollars in change sprayed out of my wallet all over the checkout counter at Lowe's, and the whole trip turning out to be unnecessary, and a lot of similar things (but hey, at least it was only a hundred and four degrees out. It could have been worse). I also haven't updated the photo blog in like a week. So much for "pretty much every day". Well, that went out the window a long time ago, really.

The kids start swimming lessons tomorrow. This is probably the number four event of their year, right behind Christmas, their birthdays, and our annual summer Morro Bay trip. LT can swim quite well, when he has a snorkel and mask. Good luck to the swimming teacher who has to teach him not to sink without them, though. C thinks she's a sea lion, and gladly cannonballs and dives off the side into the pool, except that she can't actually swim successfully. Yet. I think she'll really take off during this session, and LT will too.

We have a tenant in our apartment. She's about 21 and looks like, I dunno, picture the most gorgeous classy vivacious charismatic blonde blue-eyed tan 21-year-old you can, with a great figure, who has no stretch marks and no facial blemishes, and that's what she looks like. Good thing I'm so secure in my own appearance that I never ever feel like a dowdy old fat person when I'm around her, right? Of course right.

And really, other than boring you to tears with more accounts of our horrific weather forecasts (woo hoo! down to 103 by next Sunday!), that's all I've got. See why I've not been around?

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

these days (updated with today's EVEN MORE APPALLING forecast)

First, a little visual:

Was it not a month ago that "63 to 73" was the (granted, quite unseasonable) range for HIGH temperatures? WHO ON EARTH SAID THIS COULD HAPPEN? I wanna know.

Oh yeah. God. Sorry, God. But WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THIS??

Here's a concrete example of the way this heat affects me: Today I took the kids to a friend's place to swim in their swimming hole (we's country kids. we ain't got no swimmin' pools), and I forgot my camera. I haven't gone out without that camera more than five times since I got it. I take the camera to the grocery store (I lock it in the trunk while I shop, but you never know, I might see something vaguely photographable on the quarter-mile trip there or back). But I forgot to take it today, and not only were the kids eminently photogenic today, but there was a waterfall. And you know (oh, man, I'm sorry for how WELL you know) how I am about waterfall pictures.

And also, I just wanted to tell you that between my two kids and myself, we managed to eat an entire blackberry pie today, except for one piece which I'm sure will be gone by the time we go to bed tonight. Maybe that whole idyllic family-picking-blackberries-Mom-baking-with-them thing wasn't such a good idea.

Poor pie. Your days were numbered. Little did you know HOW numbered.

(I did make a really good sugar-free, whole-grain blackberry cobbler as well. The kids and T ate that one last night.)

Yesterday evening we saw a really cool thing. [Cue Wild Kingdom theme music]. We were out for our berry-picking walk and as we were going across the creek near the abandoned beaver dam, we saw two new beavers swimming around scoping out the place. So hopefully I'll be able to actually get some pictures of them before they re-abandon the place. The ones I tried last night could just as well have been pictures of Bigfoot, thanks to the dim light and my lack of a tripod. This evening (as soon as it cools down to, oh, say, NINETY FIVE DEGREES outside) I'll try again, and be better prepared.

Meanwhile I think I'll just go climb into the freezer for a while.

Monday, July 11, 2005

so much like somebody I know...

Ah, a girl after my own heart. How often did I get dragged along as a child to rather uninteresting (or at least less interesting than a new Nancy Drew book) adult activities, and find some way to bury myself in a story?

Not that, um, I do that now. At all. Nope, way too grown up to take a book with me everywhere just in case I get to sneak in a few minutes' worth of reading at some point. Me?

P.S. The dress was a little much for a baby shower, but she wanted to wear it, and she's only going to outgrow it (very soon) anyway. And no, I didn't make that one, but I wish I had, because I swear every time I take her somewhere in it someone assumes I did.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

a pleasant little surprise

Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned in a post that our school had had these "substance free" signs, and taken them all down before I got a picture of one? Well, I was walking through the elementary school tonight, and lo and behold, there one was.

Not only does it cast a bit of doubt on the depth and scope of elementary education, it's also another great example of why not to use double-negatives.

Also, just across the street from the school, there's this:

What I think is especially funny is the sign over the door that says "Grandpapa's Place". Um, how sweet!

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Can we do that again tomorrow?

Well. I didn't break any of my resolutions. Although I should perhaps have resolved not to absentmindedly back up and run into people, because, um, yeah. As I told Kristen, I'm going to have to have "Oh, I am so sorry!" carved on my headstone when I die. Sigh.

(I will note for the record that in a moment of uncharacteristic capable-ness, I managed to not keep talking loudly into a sudden silence, when the carousel music stopped and Kristen and I were having an animated discussion about, I dunno, preterism and Hank Hanegraaff and the book of Revelation, or something. I see your skeptical look, but it's true, I swear it is.)

And also, I had just the most fantastic, wonderful time. It was too short, was all. But there was not the slightest bit of awkwardness, and there were no moments of sitting uncomfortably trying to reach for a topic to discuss to fill a silence. We had a really, really great time. At least I did; I think Kristen did too.

Here are a couple of pictures (there are more from the day in the photo blog):

Kristen, modeling the headwear which everyone who's anyone will be sporting very, very soon. (Actually, it's C's "Lydia Bennet bonnet" -- her second one, as the first went over a waterfall on our trip to Hetch Hetchy).



The requisite holding-the-camera-at-arms'-length close-up



At the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. (it was very, very windy. Kristen's hair behaved beautifully but mine was being bratty.)

Golden Gate Park, by the way, would almost (ALMOST) make it worth the hassle of living in San Francisco. (but not worth the expense; there is nothing but NOTHING that could make it worth the expense, short of the death of a very wealthy distant relative with a generous will, or something of the sort). C wants to move there for the sake of the carousel alone. I've told her they'd frown on letting her have a ranch in downtown SF, and it's given her pause, but I can see the gears of her mind working to figure out a loophole.

P.S. I still hate hate hate driving on bridges.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Resolutions

Kristen has the gall (and good fortune) to MOVE AWAY FROM CALIFORNIA. I mean, come on, it's not like I have friends coming out my EARS here, and she's taking one of them all the way across the country. That is not very nice.

However, it happens that she'll be nearer to my neck of the woods than usual before she goes, so it is possible that I may be able to travel to San Francisco and meet her. So, in the event that that should occur, here are my Serious Resolutions.

1. I will not snort when I laugh (please God).
2. I will attempt to assess at least a few the things I am going to say before I say them, so as to avert a small amount of the usual self-flagellation on the way home over having said really goofy embarrassing things.
3. I cannot guarantee I will not be clumsy. I do, however, resolve to avoid injuring Kristen, if at all possible.
4. I will try (although it will be hard) not to drive Kristen crazy with my whole stopping-every-three-seconds-to-take-a-photograph habit. Although I think I may as well apologize in advance for breaking this one. Sorry, Kristen.
5. I will not say "crap" or "freaking". I do, when I'm nervous. Some women giggle. I pseudo-swear.
6. I will not get so involved in conversation that I lose my children. Hey, it could happen.
7. I will occasionally stop for breath, and to let Kristen get a few words in. She may have to smack me a few times until I remember this one, though.

P.S. On a totally unrelated note, I could use your help over at my photo blog in the next few days. Please?